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MANILA: A Vatican-sponsored conference on the family ended on May 16 with a call for Asian Catholics to fight abortion, contraception and same-sex marriage as “threats to the very existence of the family.”

The four-page document issued by 551 participants from 14 Asian countries, including 28 bishops, claimed that advocacy for same-sex marriages “attempts to reduce marriage to a sterile relationship between people of the same sex.”

“Abortion kills the very life without which no family can exist,” the document read, adding that contraception and sterilization threaten the “procreative purpose of marriage and the family by attacking the very wellsprings of human life.”

The document was released at the conclusion of the four-day meeting, which was organized by the Pontifical Council for the Family and the Philippines bishops’ conference, to discuss the 30-year old Vatican “Charter of the Rights of the Family”.

The conference was held in the Philippines following a long-running battle between Church and state authorities over a reproductive health law that paved the way for funding contraception and sex education in the country.

The conference document lambasted governments and other social institutions “that mitigate against life and the family through coercive measures that run counter to the rights of individuals, couples and families to flourish according to the natural law and the laws of the Church”.

“Governments that promote contraception, abortion, sterilization, coercive population control, divorce, same-sex marriages and euthanasia, destroy families which they are duty bound to protect and foster,” the document said.

The document insisted that the family is “based on marriage ... between a man and a woman” and is a "natural institution to which the mission of transmitting life is exclusively entrusted.

“We urge governments to consider seriously the ‘Charter on the Rights of the Family’ in the formulation of policies affecting the family,” the document read. --ucanews.com